Indeed! And thank you. Heaping abuse in response to perceived abuse just makes the whole world (full of) arseholes.

If one can keep the appropriate level of calm, then I approve of pointing out the technical flaws in a non-abusive manner. Though I think even that has mostly been done of late in more of a knee-jerk (and less useful and less convincing) fashion than in a continued attitude of helpfulness.

If the poster annoys you, then stop abusing yourself and stop reading what they write. Especially stop spending time soaking in the annoyance while you compose a reply. This is particularly true if the annoyance reaches a level that leads to impaired judgement or just saps eloquence. If you need to assist your personal will power, then add custom CSS to just hide such (or force a smaller font or something).

If you are indeed primarily concerned about the uninitiated being lead astray, then a reasoned and calm reply specific to the concrete errors in a specific post is the best solution. Ranting, exasperated, or abusive replies are more likely to be discounted as being the ones authored by the jerks.

Finally, on a note that I suspect may not be successfully received by many of those it is meant for, it might be wise for one to consider that many of the accusations (of hubris and similar) are themselves a bit ironic. The level of the perceived egregiousness of the claimed abusive posting seems to be partially attributable to confirmation bias. It is particularly sad to see technical errors being made in responses by people who are so self confident in their perception of how utterly wrong nearly everything written by a particular author must be.

Sticking to calm and specific refutations has the added benefit of avoiding making yourself look nearly as bad as the author who so annoys you.

Language like "This is similar to errors I have pointed out to you several times before" will save more innocent flies than "Yet another pile of steaming guano from our serial flinger of poo". And the body of inartful replies is becoming an aggregation that can be more annoying, and not as easily ignored.

Sincere thanks to those who consider keeping the tone respectful. ( No, I don't expect you to feel actual respect. ;)

- tye        

In reply to Re^7: RAM: It isn't free . . . (the aggrieved troll their troll) by tye
in thread RAM: It isn't free . . . by locked_user sundialsvc4

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